Turkey's Kurds once supported Erdoğan. But that all changed in 2015. In the early afternoon of July 20, 2015, Havva Custan joined hundreds of student activists from across Turkey in the border town of Suruç. The students huddled behind a young woman, who announced to reporters and media activists their intention to cross into Syria and rebuild the largely Kurdish city of Kobane, which had been devastated by ISIS militants earlier that year. Custan was standing outside the huddle, snapping photos and tweeting about the occasion. That’s when the bomb went off. A 20-year-old Turkish student had detonated himself in an explosion that killed 33 people, including four of Custan’s friends. “When it happened, I had no idea how big the explosion was,” says Custan, now 25. “I had no idea how many people died.” |